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The Way of the Dream by Marie-Louise von Franz
The Maker of Dreams
Legend has it that when the gods made the human race, they fell to arguing where to put the answers to life so the humans would have to search for them.
One god said, “Let’s put the answers on top of a mountain. They will never look for them there. “
“No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away. ” Another god said, “Let’s put them in the center of the earth. They will never look for them there. “
“No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away. ” Then another spoke, “Let’s put them in the bottom of the sea. They will never look for them there.”
“No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away.”
Silence fell. . . .
After a while another god spoke, “We can put the answers to life within them. They will never look for them there.”
And so they did that.
Analytical Psychology focuses on four major archetypes of the unconscious: the shadow, the anima, the animus, and the Self. Throughout this book we have examined dreams which reveal the first three. Now we come to the fourth and central archetype,
the Self.
The Self is the regulating and unifying center of the total psyche, both conscious and unconscious. Symbolically it has been expressed throughout the history of mankind as the inner Godhead, or the image of God.
This dream not only reveals the energies of the Self but also explains the function of dreams in the human psyche.
I had this dream when I was doing my analytical training in Zurich. The evening prior, a friend and I discussed our anxiety about interpreting other people’s dreams.
The dream holds a very deep mystery for me. In the dream, I was myself and yet I was not myself. The dream ego had a wisdom and a knowledge that I do not have. It was as if the I who is me in the dream (rather than in waking life) was present during our discussion and provides the understanding.
At the beginning of the dream, I was sitting cross-legged on the ground in the central square of an ancient walled city. A young man full of life and vitality entered the square. He was naked to the waist, and the sun reflected through his long blond hair. He sat down opposite me and told me a dream, which I interpreted. As I interpreted his dream, rocks, huge boulders, fell out of the sky and hit the dream, causing it to split. Chunks flew off, revealing an inner structure to the dream made up entirely of nuts and bolts.
And, as he continued to relate his dream, other boulders fell from the sky. On impact, more chunks flew off the dream, progressively revealing an inner skeleton, which eventually took the form of a kind of abstract modern sculpture made of iron. I walked over and picked up a chunk that had been knocked off the dream. It was made of bread. I said to the young man, “This demonstrates how a dream must be interpreted. You must know what to discard. It’s just like life.”
Then the dream changed. The youth and I still sat opposite each other, but on the bank of a river. The form which his dream had previously taken had changed. Rather than being composed of the nuts and bolts skeleton and chunks of bread, the dream now formed a pyramid of many colors, with each color forming either a triangle or a square. It was as if this pyramid, about five feet high, was shingled on all sides with thousands of these small colored squares and triangles. And the colors kept changing, an incredible flux of color change. As the color changed in one of the shingles, then another color had to change in another part of the pyramid. The energies were in constant motion. I explained to the youth that this balancing of energy was what dreams were all about. They compensate psychic energy.
Then again the dream changed. The pyramid which had been so beautiful with all the many colors was now com posed entirely of shit. And there was another pyramid on top of the base pyramid, but it was invisible. Moreover, the top pyramid was upside down, so that the tips of the two pyramids came together into a central point. But that apex was also invisible. This puzzled me because that point was necessary to hold the structure together. Then the apex began to glow with an intense white light. It was strange looking into that space. There should have been something there, but there was only light. I looked down at the base pyramid, and as I peered deeply into the pyramid of shit, I realized, “The hand of God is in the shit. ” Those were the exact words that came to me.
Then I knew why I couldn’t see the invisible point. That glowing white point was the face of God, and no one looks at the face of God and lives. Just like a hole in a fence. You
can’t see the hole if you haven’t got the fence. What’s visible makes the invisible visible. Then I woke up. -male dreamer
At the beginning of the dream, I was sitting cross-legged on the ground in the central square of an ancient walled city. A young man full of life and vitality entered the square. He was naked to the waist, and the sun reflected through his long blond hair. He sat down opposite me and told me a dream, which I interpreted . . . .
The evening before, the dreamer had puzzled about where dreams come from and how one interprets them. Because this is such a vitally important question, the unconscious revealed this beautiful dream, as if the Self, as the center of the dream, introduced itself to him, and said, “I am the maker of the dream. Look at what it is. ”
First he is in the square of a walled city. Since Roman times, old European walled cities were laid out as a square or a circle with a cross in the middle, in mandala form. The original mythological idea behind it was that the center represented the center of the world. You find it in the pattern of Roman towns, in all Roman foundations, and later in most medieval towns. It’ is really a mandala, a world center. The dreamer is in the center of just such a place, in the center of human life and human civilization, and there also sits the young man who tells the dream. He is a blond-haired youth, an unknown young man who is full of vitality. We could compare him to a sun hero, because blond hair is generally associated with solar qualities. He is the enlightened one and also the healthy one within the dreamer. We could even see in him an aspect of the Self of the personality, because ultimately the Self is the dreamer, the sender of the dream, and the interpreter of the dream. We are only the clown who watches it all .
. . As I interpreted his dream, rocks, huge boulders, fell out of the sky and hit the dream, causing it to split. Chunks flew off it, revealing an inner structure to the dream made up entirely of nuts and bolts.
And, as he continued to relate the dream, other boulders fell from the sky. On impact, more chunks flew off the dream, progressively revealing this inner skeleton, which eventually took the form of a kind of abstract modem sculpture made of iron . . . .
Alarge boulder falls from heaven and hits the dream. That has to be seen together with the fact that he asked himself, “How does one interpret dreams?” Interpreting a dream is not something one can do by rational effort alone. One depends a bit on the help of the unconscious, on hunches coming from the unconscious which hit the mark. The art of dream interpretation is to aim in the right way and hit the mark that clicks in the dreamer. That’s why, when someone discusses dreams with others and they all voice a different theory about what it might mean, the dreamer has the feeling, “Yes, it could mean this, it could mean that. ” Then all of a sudden somebody says something and it clicks. The dreamer then feels, “That’s it! Now I feel that’s it. ” That’s when the boulder falls from heaven.
I always feel when I interpret dreams to people that, if the unconscious doesn’t give me the right hunch, I am lost. I can stammer forever, but the unconscious, thank God, is very interested in the understanding of dreams and generally helps one to hit the mark. But it is really an act of grace that falls from heaven.
What remains is a structure made up of bolts and nuts. The bolts could be looked at as a masculine symbol and the nuts as a feminine symbol. In German the nuts are called Mutter-mother. Therefore, this structure is a union of the masculine and feminine principles. It is a union of opposites. The bolts with the nuts are there to connect, to make connections.
How does this relate to dream interpretation?
Well, every dream makes an essential connection between our ego consciousness and our inner center. A lasting connection. Everyone who has observed and watched his own dreams over years will have a series of dreams in mind of which he will inwardly say, “That dream and what it meant, I will never forget. ” One is forever linked with it and through that dream, one is linked with one’s inner center.
. . I walked over and picked up a chunk that had been knocked off the dream. It was made of bread. I said to the young man, “This demonstrates how a dream must be interpreted. You must know what to discard. It’s just like life. ” . . .
Now, as soon as the interpretation hits the mark, or hits home, as we say, then it turns into the bread of life. Whenever we understand a dream properly, we feel nourished. We feel, so to speak, the supernatural nourishment we need inside, which comes from the unconscious. That is very often represented in dreams as either the bread of life or the water of life, because when it hits the mark, one is vivified and nourished, and one has a kind of happy, satisfied feeling, like the feeling you have after eating a good meal. One feels, “That’s it. Now I know where I am going. Now I can go on. ” Something becomes peaceful and satisfied within one.
When those boulders hit down, some of the substance, the bread, flies away, ·and what remains are bolts and nuts which slowly build up a strange pyramidlike structure. So there is, so to speak, an outer form of the dream and the dream essence. And we can say, “Yes, the outer form of the dream is the sequence of images which we have to understand, which we have to follow up.”
But then, and this is the most difficult part of dream interpretation, we have to ask ourselves, “Now, what is the essence of the dream message? What does the dream tell us?” Then we have to penetrate to the essence of the message, the divine message which is contained in that strange shell, that sequence of absurd pictures, those difficult-to understand images. This essence points to the Self. Dreams always point to the inner center. They are like hundreds of forms all pointing to the inner center. Every dream is an attempt of nature to center us, to relate us again back to our innermost center, to stabilize our personality.
The major question in dream interpretation is explained to the dreamer: namely, what to discard and what to keep. “It’s like life.” The dream, like life, has a surface which one has to discard. For instance, dreams, being pure nature, use some very absurd similes, some of them in very bad taste. I remember, for instance, a painter analysand who dreamt that he was taking a shit and he produced so much, more and more, that the toilet overflowed with it. Then we found out what had happened. The evening before he had started a painting on a small canvas. Then he had a lot more fantasies, but he couldn’t find room for them on the small canvas. So, you see, because he was a bit stingy and didn’t want to buy a bigger canvas, the dream clearly told him what it thought of his attitude.
So you see, the dream does not follow the rules of our good education or the ideas of good manners. It speaks a natural language. The surface is sometimes very repellent, or just stupid. People will say, “Last night I had an absurd, stupid dream.” Then they have to discard the image so they can break through to the meaning. The imagery is not the important thing. The meaning, the message, is the important thing. And, as the dream says, it’s the same in life.
. . Then the dream changed. The youth and I still sat opposite each other, but on the bank of a river . . . .
It is as if the first part of the dream tried to explain to the dreamer what the dreams are in their essence and where they come from, while the second part of the dream tried to explain to the dreamer how dreams function within the course of life which is symbolized by the river.
The river is an image of the flow of time. So it’s not merely a question of what this or that dream means, hut rather what is the meaning of the whole river of dream life that we enter every night? What is it? What’s the meaning of it? Where does that river come from or what’s the basic principle of its aliveness?
. . The form which his dream had previously taken had changed. Rather than being composed of the nuts and bolts skeleton and chunks of bread, the dream now formed a pyramid of many colors, with each color forming either a triangle or a square. It was as if this pyramid, about five feet high, was shingled on all sides with thousands of these small, colored squares and triangles . . . .
In the dream, by the side of the river, the structure of bolts and nuts changes into a pyramid shingled with thousands of colored quadrangles and triangles which is constantly alive and moving.
Now, the pyramid is a symbol of what Jung calls the Self, the innermost divine center of the psyche. It is an image of the Self for both men and women. If the Self is personified in a man, it’s usually a wise old man; and if it is personified in a woman, it is generally a wise old woman. When it is not personified, however, when it is what one would call a mandala, beyond the differences of sex, it simply means the innermost center of the human psyche. Here, the image of the Self is a four-sided pyramid, with each side being a triangle.
The Egyptian pyramids were built in this form, and the uppermost stone which crowned the pyramid was in itself a small miniature of the large pyramid. We can’t see those uppermost stones anymore because they have fallen off, but probably they were covered with gold and were oriented in such a way that the first ray of the rising sun reflected off them. The idea was that the moment when the sun hit the point of the pyramid, the dead would be resurrected. At that moment the dead king who rested in the pyramid would rise from his grave and go up along the path of the Sun God and over the horizon. The stone, the pointed stone on top of the Egyptian pyramids, was called hen hen. It was a sacred stone and was also connected with the word benu,, which is the word for phoenix, the symbol of resurrection. So the pyramid is always associated with the eternal part of the dead person. The pyramid is a grave which survives death and resurrects the dead to an eternal life in communion with the Sun God. When the rays of the rising sun hit the hen-hen stone, the dead Pharaoh in his grave was enlightened. He rose from the dead, and awakened again from the underworld.
. . And the colors kept changing, an incredible flux of color change. As the color changed in one of the shingles, then another color had to change in another part of the pyramid. The energies were in constant motion. I explained to the youth that this balancing of energy was what dreams were all about. They compensate psychic energy. . . .
The dream stresses that the many triangular and quadrangular shingles which cover the pyramid are colored in a thousand nuances. Because it is a living thing, the pyramid is constantly changing. Whenever one color nuance changes on one side, another color must change on another side in order that a fluid equilibrium is preserved throughout the whole pyramid.
We have observed that this equilibrium is a function of the Self. The Self, the innermost regulating center of our psyche, seems to aim at keeping the whole psychological system in a fluid balance. We call that the law of compensation. Whenever one takes on a lop-sided attitude in consciousness-too rational, too spiritual, too materialistic, too driven by a single drive-then the dreams compensate by bringing up that which outweighs it on the other side. that’s why Saint Augustine after his conversion to a higher spirituality said, “Thank God, I am not responsible for my dreams.” He must have had dreams which pulled him right down to earth.
This law of compensation, however, is not a mechanical compensation: if I try to be good, my dreams will be bad, or, if I try to be too cheerful, my dreams will be melancholy. It’s not a mechanical way of bringing in the opposite. Rather, it is a compensation in the service of the totality. It is as if the dream says, “You are lop-sided compared to your inner totality. ” That is the essential wisdom of the dream: to preserve a balance among all our psychic opposites and establish a kind of middle way. The unconscious seems to be · in favor of the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy, or the idea of the Tao as being a subtle balance of opposites.
. . Then again the dream changed. The pyramid which had been so beautiful with all the many colors was now composed entirely of shit. . . .
Here we have again a union of extreme opposites: divine light and shit, the most eternal and the most transient, the most treasured and the most valueless. We discard shit. We cannot digest it, so we get rid of it. It is the thrown-away stuff.
. . And there was another pyramid on top of the base pyramid, but it was invisible. Moreover, the top pyramid was upside down, so that the tips of the two pyramids came together into a central point. But that apex was also invisible. This puzzled me because that point was necessary to hold the structure together. Then the apex began to glow with an intense white light. It was strange looking into that space. There should have been something there, but there was only light. . . .
Just as in the real Egyptian pyramid the uppermost point is the most luminous and important part of the whole structure, so it is in this dream pyramid. The upper point is empty space, something invisible, which is at the same time radiating a light. One is naturally reminded of the Buddhist teaching that Nirvana is the uppermost point of emptiness, that the Self is not an empty emptiness, but an emptiness full of light that has no specific definable content, while being the source of inner enlightenment.
I think now that Zen Buddhism and many other Eastern meditation techniques have so widely spread, it is not necessary to comment much more on this symbol. It is that state which the peoples of the East are striving for in their meditation exercises and techniques. Humanity, so to speak, is aiming at realizing that point of the pyramid. It represents the highest value in the psyche, or the Godhead, or the inner Buddha. The different schools give it different names, but it is always that same inner thing.
. . I looked down at the base pyramid, and as I peered deeply into the pyramid of shit, I realized, “The hand of God is in the shit. ” Those were the exact words that came to me . . . .
This point is made visible in the dream by the fact that the pyramid consists of solid shit. One is reminded that the alchemists always thought that gold was found in shit. The highest is found in the lowest. And in certain Eastern schools of meditation, it has been pointed out that after having reached illumination, one returns to the very ordinary life-the very ordinary life is also part of one’s illuminated life. There is no contrast between having an inner illumination and living the shitty life of every day. Even those opposites belong together.
. . Then I knew why I couldn’t see the invisible point. That glowing white point was the face of God, and no one looks at the face of God and lives. Just like a hole in a fence. You can’t see the hole if you haven’t got the fence. What’s visible makes the invisible visible. Then I woke up.
But the light makes the hand of God visible in the shit, and if we can see the hand of God in the shit, then we can stand the shit. Otherwise we suffocate in it. That’s it! That’s the message of the dream pyramid.
He dreamt he was a butterfly. And ever after he was puzzling whether he was a man who dreamt that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreamt it was a man.
Are we the dream of the Self, or is the Self our dream?
We just don’t know. ~The Way of the Dream, Page 218-229
